MMA on Tap Top 10 - September 18, 2007

Here are the latest MMA on Tap Top 10 fighter rankings. We will be updating these pretty much whenever an adjustment is needed, like after a major event, for example.

The rankings break down into six different lists of 10. Five of them are by division and the last is our pound-for-pound rankings. If you ever want to compare these with your own or just take a look at the latest update, you can find them under the Top 10 category in our features section.

The rankings were tabulated by Scott and myself. Feel free to chime in with your own lists or any adjustments that can be recommended.

Comments

Good lists, these are hard to make&#8230some of the divisions are severely stacked&#8230it&#8217s too bad all these guys aren&#8217t a part of the same org

Posted by w3stcoast on 2007-09-19 20:09:15

Ortiz is barely hanging onto his spot at 10 in the light heavyweight rankings. Basically Ortiz is hanging around because he&#8217s Tito Ortiz. If you look at our past rankings, we&#8217ve certainly factored in Ortiz&#8217s most recent efforts against Griffin and Shamrock as well as his loss to Chuck and his draw with Evans. He&#8217s clearly not the same Tito anymore. However there hasn&#8217t really been any other fighters at 205 lbs that have done enough to unseat him yet.

We also considered Nakamura, Evans, and Lambert to put in Ortiz&#8217s place. Nakamura is coming off a loss to Shogun which normally wouldn&#8217t be a big deal. However his past three wins after his loss to Barnett are against guys who aren&#8217t even near the top 20 in the weight class. We probably have him somewhere in between 11-15 right now however. A win over Machida this Saturday would probably move him up and knock Ortiz out of the rankings.

Evans is on quite the run but doesn&#8217t have the experience nor the big name win for us to be able to move him up above Tito just yet. Lambert is a good canidate but he needs to capitalize on his win over Babalu with some more solid wins.

As for Fedor, his inactivity is catching up to him. If he doesn&#8217t fight within the next 4-6 months, he&#8217s definitely going to have to move down.

Posted by John Chandler on 2007-09-19 18:54:37

Tito Ortiz is listed in the top 10. Why? Who was the last Top-10 rated fighter Ortiz had a victory over? For that matter, when was the last time Ortiz had an impressive victory against anyone? His Shamrock fights were a joke, he beat Cote (who was out of his own weight class), and he edged Griffin, but in a split decision. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be there, I’m just wondering what the reasoning is. I just don’t think he belongs in the Top 10 anymore.

What is the plan for Fedor on this list? If he doesn’t sign with the UFC, then presumably he won’t fight anyone else on this heavy weight list (except maybe Barnett). How long would he stay at the top fighting people who don’t even rate?

Posted by Kuch on 2007-09-19 17:07:44

When&#8217s the last time that Diaz has fought at lightweight? How about this past weekend against Mike Aina? Diaz has stated in the past that he isn&#8217t going back to fight at welterweight until after he wins a title at a lower weight class. The fight with Gomi was ruled a no contest but it obviously showed that Diaz&#8217s skills are legit and that Gomi may have lost a step with two losses in the past year.

We originally ranked Aoki at lightweight but then decided to move him to welterweight after finding out that he&#8217s actually the Shooto champion in that weight class after his win over Akira Kikuchi. Aoki&#8217s two fights at welterweight were two victories over Kikuchi, a fighter that we previously had ranked 10th at welterweight.

The swapping of Serra and Hughes was actually a change that we wanted to make last time around to fix a previous one but never got around to it.

Posted by John Chandler on 2007-09-19 16:26:15

Um&#8230 name a time Nick Diaz has fought at Lightweight (155)? My understanding is that he has fought once at 161 pounds against Gomi and that fight was ruled no contest.

Another query is that Aoiki is predominantly a lightweight, why is he not ranked at lightweight and can you name any fights at 170 punds?

Also, In your last top ten you have Matt Serra ranked number 2 and Matt Hughes ranked number 3&#8230 neither have fought since then, so why have the rankings between the two changed?